


four suns in the sunset

by TobermorianSass



Series: the age of miracles [1]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: ALL THE POLITICS, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, First Order Politics, Gen, Hux Family Drama, POV Multiple, Politics, Space Fascism, frank discussion of eugenics, in which the author attempts to subvert certain parts of aftermath life debt, the Military-Industrial Complex but in space
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-15
Updated: 2016-08-15
Packaged: 2018-08-08 22:26:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 17,402
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7776049
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TobermorianSass/pseuds/TobermorianSass
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The rise of the First Order, its architects at work and the beginnings of a portrait of the tyrant as a young child. </p><p>Or, in which a meeting is held in the Corporate Sector, the future of the galaxy determined, the beginnings of a family drama unfold and no one really knows who is working for whom and who is who.</p>
            </blockquote>





	four suns in the sunset

**Author's Note:**

> The title is a riff on the title of the Pink Floyd song [Two Suns In the Sunset](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3TSz30Nj2n4) which is about nuclear fallout, which is thematic since this is the beginning of my attempt to stick the cold war in space.
> 
> Shoutout to Aich and Isy for giving this a look over and to [song_of_staying](http://archiveofourown.org/users/song_of_staying/pseuds/song_of_staying) for beta'ing this fic and patiently helping me pull this fic together. 
> 
> Some notes on the abbreviations: the ISB = the Imperial Security Bureau & the CSA = the Corporate Sector Authority.

The man, the Doctor, looked barely out of his teens, little more than a boy: all blue-eyed and baby-faced, startled like a ryukyan hare, when she cleared her throat and he whirled around to look at her. So young and naive. Only the young and the naive knew how to tune-in, tune-out and ignore all the ways in which the sneaks and the spooks could creep up behind them. She could be wrong. It could be her fault. People had told her it was a bad habit of hers; sneaking up on people until she was right behind them. Just standing there and watching, watching until they felt the hairs on the back of their neck stand on end from the sixth sense which warns everyone when they’re being stalked like prey.

She’d watched silently as the boy worked at his slides for nearly ten minutes - he hadn’t looked up once, hadn’t felt a damn thing. Anywhere else, any other planet, this could have meant the difference between life and death. She toyed with mentioning it: not a threat, but a friendly warning. The galaxy was in foment and that made everyone nervous, a little more dangerous than they would have been, and looking over one’s shoulder was a good habit to cultivate. There was always the chance he’d run skittish if she did mention it and she wasn’t about to take chances. She wasn’t here on this kind of business this time round. He’d learn his lesson when the time was right. Later, probably, when it was too late. That’s how it always went. Anyway, she wasn’t his babysitter; that was someone else’s job. Someone who wasn’t good at what they were meant to be doing: security, for one. Whoever was the brains behind this facility, for another. She shouldn’t have been able to walk in like she did, but she had and heads would have to roll for this.

“Hello,” she said. Nothing more, nothing less. The introductions would come later, once the boy-man knew just where he stood.

This was another one of those bad habits of hers: another one of those things that someone had once told her was an act of ‘ruthless psychological intimidation’. Something to do with the way she smiled like she knew everyone’s most intimate secrets and imagination and guilt filling in the rest, she’d been told. Well, if people were going to treat simple hellos like she was about to pull their fingernails out, she wasn’t about to stop them. Especially not if they made her job easier. Everyone had their comforts - hers just happened to be a series of bad habits she couldn’t seem to break.

The boy-man swallowed nervously. His right hand curled around the microscope – an instinctive and protective gesture he hastily backtracked on: his jaw went taut, eyes carefully blank and he deliberately crossed both his hands on his lap. So there it was, then. The tell. Any other time she’d have struck with the full force of the ISB behind her, but not today. Today was business of a different, personal nature.

It really was the boy’s lucky day. And he wouldn’t even know by how much.

“Can I help you?” he asked with obviously feigned nonchalance, at odds with the beads of sweat that were beginning to pop along his forehead.

“I’m counting on it,” she replied, indulging her bad habit a little more. “I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t think you could help me.”

“Um,” he said. “Ah. I need - clearances - protocol - you understand. People - there are all kinds of people getting around nowadays.”

She grinned at him. “It’s a bit late for that, isn’t it?”

He winced, but held his ground stubbornly – even with his hands shaking like a TIE in an electrical storm, another uncontrollable tell. “Your identification, please. Or I’ll call Security.”

“That won’t be necessary,” she replied. “A retinal scan should do for both of us.”

The boy-man’s other interesting tell, the one that interested her _particularly_ , was the way his eyes kept darting around the room, quickly and systematically cataloguing the room - and yet whenever he reached the furthest left corner of the room where a couple of transparisteel cylinders lined the wall, he’d glance away too quickly, too hastily to be anything but the obvious message. _Don’t look_ . _Don’t pay attention_. It was the kind of mistake any rookie could have made, playing this kind of game.

“Colonel,” he stammered, clearly spooked by the ID the scan dredged up from their database, then added, just a little bit too rudely - clearly shaken by the thought that the ISB was taking a _personal_ interest in him. “What do you want?”

She studied him in silence, watching until one of the beads of sweat turned into a dropled and then trickled down his temple before she relented.

“I know who you work for,” she told him. “I know what he does. I know that he’s in trouble, or will be soon and so will you, unless the people I work for know how loyal you are. I can help you - if you help me.”

“I - I don’t know what you mean.”

She eyed him with a kindly pity that made him flush bright red.

“I know you’re smart,” she continued, once he’d had enough time to consider the unwisdom of lying so inelegantly to her. “A certified genius, according to your files. I also know you feel stifled, you’ve been pursuing experiments of your own -”

And there it was again - there and gone in a flash: a glance, not-quite, not-quite-not in the direction of the cylinders, not quite not enough for him to look back at her without guilt. _Don’t look. Don’t pay attention_.

“I know you have a project you’ve been working on,” she said. “You dislike your superior’s views and believe his work could be accomplished without his excursions into the realm of xenobiology. Oh and of course - someone important - terribly important - stars, several important someones, isn’t it? - visited this facility, what was it - two months ago? Which is it -”

She watched the young Doctor’s face as she walked over to the cylinders.

“This one?” she murmured to herself, as she strolled past them. The Doctor was visibly nervous, but that was hardly enough. One cylinder. Two. Three. Four -

“Ah,” she said watching the muscle in his temple leap as she reached the fourth cylinder. This one was filled with a transparent fluid and inside it - the future, slowly growing inside. “Interesting. They look absolutely _vile,_ don’t they? And the Someone Important who came here two months ago asked you for this?”

“She had the appropriate clearances.”

“ _She_?” she said and shook her head with a smile. “Or d’you mean the person she was here with?”

Again, the muscle in his temple leapt.

“You must learn how to control those little tells of yours,” she said, leaving the cylinders and returning to his workstation. She leaned across the table and continued conversationally: “You know, these are dangerous times for people like you. Even more dangerous for enterprising men with initiative and their little uncontrollable tells.”

“My initiative will keep the Empire running,” he told her. It wasn’t a boast. Just a guileless statement of fact, fed to him by someone else. His superior? Their own propaganda machine? It hardly mattered. He could hardly believe it now, could he, with a Colonel from the ISB almost quite literally breathing down his neck?

“We’re all counting on it, Doctor,” she replied. “You’d have been arrested already, if we weren’t so sure of it.”

The Doctor regarded her, curiosity warring with and finally triumphing over fear. What man wouldn’t be curious, after he’d been threatened, offered help and then assured that none of this was important to the conversation at hand? Men, like the rest of them, lived on thrills and curiosities.

“What do you want?” he asked her, with curiosity and not fear, this time round: straight into her hands.

She smiled and held out a cryo-frozen test tube, taken from where she’d carefully stowed it in her belt.

“A child,” she told him. “One of your special miracle babies.”

* * *

The layman’s understanding of progress was fatuously simple: a linear relationship between time and improvement which extended into infinity. For the layman, the history of the galaxy was the history of mankind in ascendance, a steady and inexorable march to the top, in which the past was repressive and old-fashioned and the future was dazzling, full of unknown and untold prospects. The past was either a cautionary tale or else untouchable and distasteful. Therefore, one dwelt upon the future. The future contained promise: it was the future which spoke of the greatness of men and what men could achieve through hard-work and natural intelligence. In the future, anyone could be great. But the past was immutable and unchangeable and littered with small men. Studying it, loving it, was symptomatic of the most unnatural tendencies - a horrifying proclivity for morbid navelgazing which took ghoulish delight in studying failure and gazing at the smallness of men rather than their glories.

Naturally this kind of thinking was less truth and more intellectual arrogance. Men were and had always been small. One day, they might go as far as to pull themselves out of smallness by the power of what they called free will and the indomitable human spirit. For now the fact remained: men were small, men liked to think they were important and that their lives had significance, men imagined the galaxy spun around them, men came and went and the galaxy continued to spin and life went on because life was relentless and inexorable and it went on, until entropy put an end to it. It proved the second fact: men everywhere were a strange and perverse constant: a little too arrogant, a little too sure of their own importance, too blind to the mysterious ways in which the galaxy functioned. And so, men refused to consider the absurdities of fate and the Force on which the galaxy spun - which was, of course, the problem - the true problem of humanocentrism: not its tendency to divide the galaxy in terms of the inferior and the superior, but its arrogance.

It wasn’t wrong to say there were inferior species. What were the Hutts, if not truly inferior, repulsive beings with their grotesque sluggish bodies and small, mean minds? No, the problem of humanocentrism was that it centred _men_ , above all and beyond all else. _Their_ past was a glorious thing, scattered with tales of conquest and bravery and individual glory. _Their_ future was always in danger of being made small and ugly. By who? The answer varied. Men lived in constant fear of this undefined threat to the future. Entire political systems had been built on this fear. The smarter, humbler man would answer: ourselves. The arrogance of such an answer was astounding, but this was what men called ‘humility’. The fanatic, or if one preferred, the fool, answered: the xeno, the alien, the inhuman, the inferior. These were the two sides of the great galactic political debate, as theorized, created and sustained by men. And the Force, fate - the absurd quality of life itself - were all carefully excised from the picture because men, men alone ruled the galaxy.

But to return to the fanatic: in his view the present was ugly and squalid and they were locked in a struggle, a war for greatness, for the future - and the only acceptable future was one which surpassed the glory of the past. This was, of course, a logical paradox. Either progress was linear and the present was uniformly better than the past, or else progress was _not_ linear - which meant progress was no longer solely the province of men. Or else, no one was concerned with history as History - an immutable and unarguable series of facts -  because history was hi _S_ tory. Which is to say, it was a story about the greatness of man and progress. And what was progress? A straight line from A to B to C to vast and unimaginable heights because the future had not been imagined _yet_ \- because progress marched, heralded by the glory of the upright, perfect man.

It was a blessing they’d lost all their fanatics in glorious and fiery deaths. The Death Star. Endor. Jakku. An ever-growing list of heroes and fanatics who stood and when faced with the barrel of a blaster had said, _you’ll never take me alive_ , and plunged straight into the jaws of death without a second thought. They would join the ranks of golden heroes people looked up to. The stuff of history holocrons. Some might even say, _trapped_ in the holocrons. Tarkin. Piett. Ree. Daala. They would remember them. That was the key: remembrance. They were now forever preserved in the past and exerted control over the future solely by virtue of the power their names wielded. They had played by the rules, or near enough to the rules – abstruse codes of honour that made them _good_ and _honourable_ people - and all they had now were the things that would be done in their name. Influence, of a sort, if a weaponized memory used for an end - whose end? someone’s end - was power, progress or _real_ influence.

But then, progress never was the province of good and honourable people except in their history holocrons.

In truth, progress occurred by leaps and jumps and regressions - almost randomly, one would say, if not for the vague method to the ways in which the jumps and leaps occurred. Nevertheless, it meant there were dangerous questions to be asked concerning the history of the galaxy, if one was so inclined. The truth of the matter was, very few were inclined to ask the truly dangerous questions. Why, for example, had it taken men so long to discover hyperdrives and why then, had it taken so long for them to feed the impulse to rove the galaxy by copying the already existing technology of the Rakatans? (Why did men fear the Force? Why did men fear things they could not own, possess, control? Why were men so fearful?) Why did men require to be _led_ , to be fed answers before they could act? And perhaps the most dangerous question of all: why did men, unlike the other intelligent sentient species, struggle with the problem of self-governance? Was it possible, perhaps, that men were never made to rule in the first place at all?

Were all heroes men who follow the rules and were all villains, all truly despicable men, the ones responsible for the leaps and strides the galaxy made towards the future? Wasn’t war at the heart of all progress, after all?

What was progress, after all, but the moment of fission - the moment when the new rules broke from the old and worlds - the galaxy - exploded? What was progress, after all, but rule-breaking? What was once impossible is now possible. What was once unnatural is now natural. The galaxy spins on its axis but the galaxy which emerged on the other side was new, completely new, thrust into the future by the rule-breakers, the fissioners: the truly despicable. The new order. There, see it rising from the fiery remains of the newly-shattered, newly-fissioned galaxy: the new order devours the old. That was the natural world’s oldest rule. The old order was ruthlessly purged by the new. Only the strongest, the most resilient would survive the war for the future. Only the strongest, the most resilient would be part of the new order.

Or if one framed this the other way: the leftovers were all that would survive the past. The leanest, the meanest, the smartest. Rats and suchlike. Survivors, who clung ferociously to life because death was unacceptable, because death was a full stop and a full stop was failure, the province of heroes and fools - the people who headlined the galaxy, not the leftovers, never the leftovers. And what were they but the leftovers, the remains of a war? What were they if not rats: loth-rats, space-rats, every breed of rat drawn from every corner of the galaxy to their little nest? Not heroes. Not great men. _Rats_. And what were rats if not consummate survivors? What were rats, if not truly miraculous?

Rats were the galaxy’s most truly miraculous creatures. Root out the rat nests and they would disappear, but they never truly died. People were glad enough, foolish enough, to believe the rats were gone because the rats were no longer visible. This was not entirely illogical. Optimism was the only reason the galaxy stayed afloat, and the lie was so easy, so satisfying to believe. Rejoice. The rats are gone! The rats are dead! At last, a rat-free galaxy is within reach. The dream was real: a single war against the rats and the rats were gone, the galaxy was free! _If only life was so despicably easy_.

Rats survived. On starships, feeding on the wiring, on the rare scraps of food, the garbage, so much garbage - an Executor-class Star Destroyer produced at least five tonnes of organic waste daily; a Corellian corvette, at least three. They lingered on in the corners of palaces: smugglers’ dens, slavers’ dens: even Senators (especially Senators) weren’t immune to this. Then, the planetary filth: cantinas, city sewers, the underbelly, industrial and urban wastelands. The entire Outer Rim. Wild Space. The Unknown Regions. They bred, they multiplied, they thrived - and they returned. But they never truly died because rats, like the rest of them, were truly miraculous creatures.

The age of miracles begins on a rainy day in a tiny back room of the Corporate Sector Authority’s headquarters on Deltooine, an elaborately carved durasteel conference table and a map of the galaxy at the center of their little world. The ten gathered around the table, the collective and nameless them, would never be more than footnotes, endnotes in the galaxy’s history. For now. Their great men were all dead: they were the leftovers. The consummate survivors. The galaxy’s most dangerous men. The future. The galaxy’s rats.

Look at them. A motley crew of space-rats: himself, a dead man, now alive; a Sith cultist who would never truly know the Force; the very last of the great Moffs; the maverick educationist who fancied himself an eugenecist; the four architects of war, the four faces of the Corporate Sector, thirty thousand star systems all simmering in quiet revolt at the New Republic’s unwillingness to understand the arithmetic of profit and loss; a banker from a bank deemed too big to fail, the other face of discontentment with the New Republic’s unwillingness to subject itself to the cold hard arithmetic of profit and loss -

“Your contact is late,” said Casull Sonn, rudely interrupting his reverie.

He sighed and studied the chrono on the wall. It read 1005 hours, just five minutes after their little conference was supposed to have begun. Another breed of man would be patient, but businessmen never were. Patience was a vice, patience was a virtue - their aphorisms were all contradictory, all irrelevant. This was history. The end of the galaxy, the end of an era was at hand. Outside, the rain was coming down in torrents, splattering ungently against the viewport. The criss cross of speeders and transports beyond was distorted, blurred by the long thin trails the raindrops left behind as they ran down the transparisteel. Business as usual on Deltooine, the unsuspecting scurrying along on their way to work, from work, on work. They could hardly know, after all, that the rats had come to roost in the skies above them.

“Not late,” he said, more to himself than to the rest of the room, before he turned away from the viewport and calmly regarded the head of Merr-Sonn munitions.

“Gentlemen,” he said, then graciously added, “Lady Santhe. My contact will arrive precisely when it is necessary. These are matters which cannot be rushed. We must take them as they come.”

“I’m certain that none of us would object to any amount of waiting,” said Lady Santhe, not a little acerbically, her hands folded on the table in front of her, “as long as we were briefed at a certain level of detail, instead of all this ridiculous - _secrecy_.”

The five of them - the arms manufacturers and the banker - were all a study in carefully crafted indifference bordering on irritation: the businessman’s Sabacc face. But no matter. They could play their game for now but they would come around. He didn’t need the Force to see it. They were symbiotes: mutually dependent, coexisting beings. They would come around – for the credits, if nothing else. It was the others who concerned him. Randd – proper and straightbacked – and whitefaced, uncomfortable with anything that wasn’t outright war. Tashu, smiling that annoying smile of his, as though he _knew_ – but did he? Did he truly? Could a Sith cultist who had never known the Force truly, deeply, who had never felt it in his bones, ever _truly_ know? No, no the Sith cultist was obsessed and obsession was not their answer. The darkness had failed them once. The future lay in balance, not the Dark, not wherever this man’s madness came from. But he was important. He was continuity. Proof that this was not simply pure ambition: proof they were the old Empire in ascendance, reborn from the ashes of Endor and Jakku. Yes, they needed him. For now.

The Commandant was the only person in the room exuding irritation and not curiosity. The rest of them were curious, despite their best Sabacc faces. But of course, none of them had been professionally trained and so it was visible, not only in the way the Force bent and warped around them but in the little things: the way Lady Santhe’s hands quivered slightly and the way Casull Sonn’s eyes kept darting towards the door. The way the Muun fretted, tapping the table with his long fingers. The way Kuat sat stone-still. Even Tashu, despite that insufferable smile of his, was sitting far too close to the edge of his seat to be _uninterested_. But the Commandant, the Commandant exuded irritation - no, frustration was the better word - in roiling waves: he frowned, fretted, eyed the chrono on the wall balefully and above all, he was confused – and he was irritated because he was confused.

This last fact pleased him greatly. One of them, at least, would appreciate what he was about to tell them.

The chrono on the wall now showed 1009. _Of course_. Cilla dearest was a dear, but dreadfully given over to theatricality, which was, he supposed, the unfortunate consequence of the very last of the Emperor’s spies having cut her teeth dabbling in the fine arts and the theory of aesthetics.

“Very well,” he said. “I’ll begin. I have a proposition: that we stop playing by the rules of engagement and disengagement - that the future is a poor and lawless place - if we allow it to be.”

“And we make the rules ourselves?” the man from Blastech said with a skeptical frown.

He steepled his fingers and peered at them over his fingertips. “No,” he said, then continued, relishing each word. “I propose we make ourselves a miracle.”

* * *

The Grand Vizier looked as well as Imperial-controlled Coruscant did, which was to say, he looked like a patchwork of life and death, but mostly he looked terrible. Coruscant _proper_ was alive and kicking: the lights were on full blast and the skyways were bustling, buzzing with people going up and down busily just like always: business as usual because megalopolis’ were strange creatures that never went to sleep, never stopped to breathe. Imperial-controlled Coruscant, by comparison, was as good as a ghost town. The Federal District was a sad sad place - dark black patches on the planet’s surface that were visible even from orbit, harsh and lonely, dying landscapes closer down to the surface: a fitting Empire for the Grand Vizier to rule over in this state: deserted and dying all alone, holding the head of a monster in its dying throes.

“Colonel,” he said, tilting his head slightly in greeting.

“Vizier Amedda,” she said, clicking her heels together sharply, without the salute and then added, not a little satirically. “You look well.”

The boy in the ill-fitting Lieutenant’s uniform behind her snorted, hastily turned it into a sneeze and then murmured an apology. Clearly she was not the only one who’d marked the Grand Vizier’s remarkable and speedy decline.

The Grand Vizier gestured impatiently, a sharp dismissal.

“I see we’ve been keeping our standards high,” she said dryly, when both the lieutenant who’d escorted her through the Palace’s maze of darkened corridors and turbolifts, and the ISB officer who’d piloted her in had left them, with a lackadaisical stroll that bordered on disrespectful. “What can I do for you?”

“Not here,” he said - and then led her down another interminable maze of corridors, deliberate detours that were too deliberate, too obvious, to really be effective. The Grand Vizier was losing his touch. They were all losing their touch. If the ISB had been wise, they would have cut their losses right at the start and sold out to the highest bidder. But they were damn fools, every single last one of them including her, or else she wouldn’t have heeded the Vizier’s summons.

His office, like the rest of the Palace, was steeped in darkness, lit solely by the city’s lights – and the floodlights the ISB had installed along the Palace’s perimeters. He indicated one of the chairs scattered haphazardly around his desk and took a seat himself behind his desk, hands underneath the table.

 _Really_ , she thought, almost insulted by the action. Surely the Grand Vizier knew better than to imagine she’d be taken in by such a patently obvious - and suspicious - gesture.

“Please don’t,” she said. “It’s no good if you won’t trust me enough to let your blaster go for a second.”

He shrugged. “Things have changed. One learns to distrust even the closest of one’s friends.”

“If it’s a matter of friends,” she replied, slowly. “You might explain your little meeting with Senator Mothma and Senator Organa two months ago. Or are you and I going to be friends now?”

Something in his face shifted and it might have been a trick of the light, but for a moment she was sure he’d bared his teeth at her, before settling into his polite, tight smile again.

“I see you haven’t lost your touch,” he said, instead.

“I keep my eyes open.”

“And your finger on the galaxy’s pulse?”

“And my finger on the galaxy’s pulse.”

His shoulders sagged, as though knowing this had lifted a great weight from him.

“How is your son?” he asked her. “Was it - I forget his name.”

She raised her eyebrows. “I didn’t know you knew I had a son.”

“I like to keep my eyes open.”

“That’s fair,” she said with a grin. “He’s alright.”

“Enjoying Naboo, I suppose,” he said, not quite looking at her.

“His aunts indulge him too much,” she said. It wasn’t strictly a lie or a truth. But if the Vizier suspected the child was still on Naboo, all the better for her.

“Grand Admiral Sloane was here,” he said, suddenly changing tack again. “Not so very long ago.”

And then back again: “The child - that was careless of you, wasn’t it - after one of your affairs? Does the father know?”

She fiddled idly with the trigger of her blaster, considering the Grand Vizier – barely more than a dark silhouette against the viewport behind him. When one was in her delicate line of work, one’s professional life and one’s personal life were only nominally separated and along the line, even the best professionals occasionally stumbled across this blurry division and made a ghastly mess. The rest simply made a mess through their careless disregard for the mercurial rules of the game. Her son was not that. He was neither a mistake, nor the result of a careless disregard for the rules but a carefully considered proposition. _One’s duty_ , Governor Tarkin had once said, _was not always the most obvious action to take_ . It required forethought. Insight, even. Anyone could follow orders, but one’s duty was _not_ the sum of those orders and her son was not an indulgence, or a careless mistake or her attempt to satisfy her own supposedly latent mothering tendencies but a carefully planned move in a game. Not _the_ game, but the _supreme_ game - the great giant game of galactic holochess they were all part of - and her son - well, the Grand Vizier didn’t need to know that either, not until she knew where he stood on the board.

But if it _had_ been carelessness, then it must have been the boy’s father. No. Correction: it _had_ been sheer carelessness on his part because she’d made bloody sure of it. One did one’s duty: that was what his wife had told her, tonelessly, colourlessly. _He does his duty, I do mine and you do yours - but I won’t let you disrupt the delicate balance of things_. Sometimes one’s duty involved subterfuge. The seemingly careless disruption of the delicate balance of things. It was a shame about the her. In another time they might have been friends. She had understood, more than he had, what mattered. _We both want the same things_ , she’d said and it was true: they were one of a kind, the wife and her. The last true servants of the Empire, unfortunately pitted against each other by the vagaries of circumstance and fate - _the Force_ , as Tashu would undoubtedly have put it. In the end they both served the same master and in the end, one did one’s duty, no matter how personally distasteful.

In the end, they were both creatures of spite and duty. The kind of people who were careless after the fact. She didn’t know about the girl but she’d been careless alright, gloating over it when it was done. But the Grand Vizier couldn’t possibly know that.

“You’ve got something on your mind,” she drawled. “Go ahead and ask me.”

The Grand Vizier scraped the desk with long fingernails before asking her, abruptly: “Who do you work for?”

“Who do I work for?” she repeated, nonplussed. “I thought we all worked for the same cause.”

He jerked his head impatiently. “Bantha fodder. Everyone knows it’s everyone for themselves.”

“I’m retired,” she said with a shrug. “Full time mother, you know.”

This seemed to agitate the Grand Vizier further. He stood abruptly and started pacing up and down behind his desk.

“You told me yourself,” he said, accusatorily. “You’re still in the game. Don’t lie to me.”

“I’ll stop lying to you if you stop lying to me,” she replied. “Why don’t you tell me what _really_ happened at that meeting with Senator Mothma and Senator Organa - why don’t you tell anyone? Or are you scared I’d shoot you if you told me you tried to defect and sell us all out - that we’d all come for you?”

He stiffened and stopped in his tracks, suddenly straight - too straight and rigid, a dark outline against the Coruscanti skyline - before sagging pitifully again. If she was the kind of person who felt sorry for people, she’d have felt sorry for him. Unfortunately, pity had never been one of her bad habits: callousness was.

“You’re good,” he said, not looking at her.

“I’m the best damn watcher of the watchers,” she replied. “Barring Jade - where the hell _is_ Mara, anyway?”

He shrugged. “No one knows. You know they wouldn’t let me defect? Not unless I brought them a full surrender and a treaty for disarmament. ‘So administrate’ Senator Mothma said. Look at this -”

He gestured sharply at the Coruscanti skyline and laughed harshly. “I can’t even afford to keep the lights on in the Palace anymore.”

“So sell out,” she said callously. “If it bothers you. There’s plenty of bidders who’d buy Coruscant out if it was on the market.”

“You don’t get -”

“No I do, actually,” she cut him off. “I didn’t come here all the way from Naboo, leaving my son behind just to listen to some old has-been whine about how he can’t live in the lap of luxury anymore. Grow up. We’re all making sacrifices -”

“So you _are_ working for someone,” he said, with satisfaction.

“Aren’t we all?”

He shook his head. “I serve the Emperor.”

The way he said it - that air of smug superiority, the implication, the unspoken word: _traitor_ \- raised her hackles.

“Are you accusing me of _disloyalty_?” she demanded.

“Oh no,” he said, raising his hands and flashing her what he probably imagined was a charming grin. “But one _does_ wonder - your retirement - so _coincidental_ , let’s say -”

She was out of her chair and across the desk in a flash, her blaster out - and jabbed under his chin. If she’d been taller she’d have grabbed his horns and yanked his head back - leveraged her height - something, anything. Her retirement appeared to have dulled the Grand Vizier’s memory of her, if he thought he could throw around these sly insinuations with impunity - or perhaps, he really was going senile with old age, forgetting her hand in the Ghost affair. He should have known: she wasn’t about to lie down and let him insult her like that - as though she would ever do less than her duty, ever serve the Empire with anything less than her heart, body, mind and soul.

“At least I’m not a snivelling coward ready to sell my comrades out to save my skin,” she hissed. “ I serve the Empire and I serve the Emperor, may he rest in peace - do _you_?”

“Is that what you teach your son?” he said. “Will he also serve the Empire - what was it you used to say - heart, body, mind and soul?”

She frowned. Something about this - the Grand Vizier’s fascination with her son  - was wrong. Something about it - something that felt as though she was being gently pushed, led along by a benign hand held out by a secret someone. There was nothing altruistic about the Grand Vizier’s interest, that much she was certain. They were all selfish, desperately private creatures. There was no _need_ for the Grand Vizier to feign interest in her son - bring him up _three_ times alongside a conversation about her work or her loyalties - unless - unless he was searching - someone - Grand Admiral Sloane, for example - had mistakenly given him a string to pull on and unwind everything.

“Okay,” she said, leaning back against his desk and sticking the blaster back in her belt. “I’ll tell you everything you seem to want to know about my son if - _if_ you’ll tell me what’s happened to Mara Jade.”

“Work?”

“Just friendly interest.”

“Hmmm,” said Vizier Amedda and stared out the viewport again. “Do you remember Gallius Rax?”

“Ah yes, the Supreme Ghost,” she said. “I only ever heard the rumours. I never met him myself.”

“Surely you must know _something_ ,” he said. “Being in the same line of work.”

She smiled, allowing condescension to seep into her voice when she answered. “Vizier Amedda, we may have both worked in intelligence, but not all branches of intelligence are equally like the others.”

“But you were a ghost,” he replied. “Weren’t you?”

“Of a very different coat.”

“How unfortunate,” he replied. “Grand Admiral Sloane was extremely insistent on knowing all about him.”

Which meant Sloane had probably threatened him with a blaster. _Good old Sloane_ , she thought, with vicious satisfaction: there was nothing more abhorrent than self-pity and the Grand Vizier had it in ample amounts.

“How much did you tell her?” she asked him.

“Oh this and that,” he said, vaguely. “She seems to believe she holds the strings to the Empire and yet _you_ seem to be under the impression the sun hasn’t set on the Empire yet – assuming you really _are_ teaching that boy of yours to follow in your footsteps.”

That was unwise of the Grand Admiral, putting all her cards on the table like that. One’s Sabacc face was the only real asset one could ever have. But then Rae Sloane was the last of the honourables: their affectionately disapproving nickname for that dying breed of Imperial official, so straightforward and righteous even in the throes of cutthroat ambition, they’d never _really_ learnt to play galactic holochess - just a poor simulacrum of it. The pieces were slowly beginning to fall into place, however. Of course, the Vizier wanted a hand in the proceedings but guaranteed by someone inside the game and at the very top - and he wasn’t sure the Grand Admiral was in a position to offer him what he wanted. Understandable. Everyone wanted a slice of the Empire and the Grand Vizier was more deserving than most. Certainly more deserving than some of the others she could name, even if he wasn’t _quite_ one of the boys.

“Do a man’s ideas die just because he does?” she asked him by way of an answer.

He was silent.

“Grand Admiral Sloane seemed quite convinced the Empire was in her hands - insofar as it could be in her hands with Rax giving her advice,” he said eventually, sounding quite distant. “Her mistake. I may be old and dying and a figurehead at the helm of a dying beast, but I have a not inconsiderable amount of resources at hand to pursue my own inquiries if it suits me.”

She crossed her arms, now on full alert. “And what did you find?”

He ran a fingernail across his teeth - one of those strangely alien habits of his that unnerved her - then turned and smiled.

“Rax had Commandant Hux snatched from Arkanis,” he said. “My source tells me he gave orders specifically concerning the Commandant and his son - not the wife. A peculiar thing about the son. They say his real mother was a kitchen girl from Coruscant. You were posted on Arkanis six years ago, weren’t you? Just before your retirement - you must have met her - or at the very least seen her - while you were there.”

She smiled blandly at him. “Isn’t that interesting.”

“Isn’t it?” he replied. “Of course, the whole matter gets more interesting the deeper one goes into it. Apparently the boy kicked up quite the fuss when they were leaving. He insisted his mother would ‘disappear’ them all if they dared, ah what was it - _break their promise_ \- by leaving the Commandant’s wife behind.”

Her lips twitched despite herself, amused at the image this conjured - a SpecOps commando with a tantruming child tucked under one arm, or perhaps, more delightfully, the Commandant’s excruciating embarrassment at having been shown up yet again, this time by his own son. No doubt the Commandant would whip the child into learning the art of subtle persuasion as a punishment for his crime later on. A shame. Children learnt better with kindness, when indulged with their own peculiar form of rationality – but the Commandant, as she recalled, had always been puzzled by children younger than the age of ten.  

“Charming,” she murmured. “I see the Commandant’s kept his reputation for strict discipline, all these years later.”

“Of course, one wonders,” he said after they’d shared a smile at the Commandant’s expense, “why Rax and the Grand Admiral were more interested in the boy and his father than they were in the loyalty officer, despite her involvement in Project Unity. The archives all agree that the Commandant’s only achievement was being investigated by Governor Tarkin for encouraging his cadets’ loyalties to himself - and of course, for that little matter with the rebels.

“And furthermore,” he continued, “one wonders why the boy believed a kitchen girl could have someone disappeared. That was your particular skill, wasn’t it - _disappearing_ people? Such a very peculiar word for a five year old to know. You can see why I worry about your loyalties, don’t you?”

She met the inquiring gaze he levelled at her evenly. He could hint all he wanted, but the truth - well the truth depended on which way one looked at it. In a certain sense, she was not a liar at all. She was merely a creature of incurable bad habits and selective truth-telling just so happened to be one of those incurable bad habits. But she was _not_ a liar. Lying was one of the baser human instincts and whatever she was, she was not _base_.

“Not so particular,” she replied. “Unless you believe Mara Jade and Governor Tarkin - and oh, half the ISB - could all potentially share half this child’s parentage. Personally, I’d worry more about Rax’s loyalties.”

“A rogue Admiral.” He grimaced. “We’ve had plenty of those in our time. A rogue spy on her own - now that is a very dangerous thing, indeed.”

“I retired from Intelligence, Vizier Amedda,” she said. “I still serve the Emperor.”

“Ah, that is the other thing,” he said. “Very curious phraseology. You see, Grand Admiral Sloane serves the _Empire_ . But you serve both the Emperor _and_ the Empire. Does Rax serve both, I wonder?”

“You could always drop by Jakku and ask him.”

His nose wrinkled in distaste and he said, not a little acidly: “Colonel Livillan, it may have escaped your attention but I am an amphibious being and deserts - even experienced from the rarefied climes of starships - are anathema to me.”

“My apologies, Vizier,” she replied. “But I don’t doubt Admiral Rax would welcome you and the ISB with open arms, if you wished to join him. I doubt he has an administrator of your capabilities in his little fleet and he will realize the need for one very soon, if he means to rebuild the Empire.”

“Would he? I was under the impression that Rax had taken it upon himself to purge the Empire - what with the curious number of Naval commanders who have disappeared, quite suddenly and without warning.”

“And you think I have something to do with it?”

“No,” he replied. “I don’t think arrogant treason in the name of Empire has ever been your style - no, I don’t think you work for Rax at all, but as you said so yourself, you _are_ the best damn watcher of the watchers - am I correct so far?”

“So far.”

“Good.” He turned away from her, pacing slowly in front of the viewport. “So, if I am right then there must be a second front - and you must be working for them.”

It was a curious thing. Once upon a time, the Grand Vizier was the most influential man in the Empire. The man who had the Emperor’s ear, who had once been, to all extents and purposes, the voice of the Emperor. And yet, here he was, begging for a slice of the influence he once had - or at least, that was what Grand Admiral Sloane had assumed. Not an illogical inference. One look at the Grand Vizier’s careworn figure, at the desolate remains of the Federal District, were all the proof one would have needed to infer that the once powerful Grand Vizier had been reduced to desperate straits.

She just wasn’t so sure he was the beggar he seemed to be, despite the dying monster he held in his hands. A beggar - well one was either born one or one wasn’t. An inherent character defect that came pre-programmed. The Emperor had carefully culled them from his inner circle: the sycophants, the beggars, the _despicables_ . The Grand Vizier had survived each of those purges which meant there was something redeeming, something _useful_ about him, even if he’d hidden it well. The problem was deciphering which side of the credit he was on now - if he was the weak link. If he was playing the game now, but on the opposite side of the board.

But it was possible - just possible - the Grand Vizier was playing a clever hand, hinting at knowing far more than he did. The most skilled spies, every ISB officer, learnt this trick and the Grand Vizier - he had cut his teeth on politics in the dying days of the Old Republic, when the Senate had been rife with intrigue of every kind. Perhaps there was nothing useful about him at all and he was precisely what he appeared to be: a dying man, a beggar in charge of a dying monster. Maybe the only reason he’d survived the Emperor’s various purges was because he’d been kept on as an oddity; one of the Emperor’s pets, testament to the Emperor’s welcoming nature and proof of his inclusivity. One xeno alongside him, another in the Navy and another one among his sorcerers. There. Settled. No more straws for his detractors to grasp at. One Empire for all the species - and order for the galaxy.

“Tell me what happened to Mara Jade,” she said, hedging around his question. “I’ve answered more than your promised single question.”

He spread his hands out and shrugged. “I only know as much as I told you. She disappeared after Endor. She was very close to the Emperor, I think - his death, along with Lord Vader’s must have proved too much for her to handle - as it did for so many in our ranks. The ISB hasn’t been able to trace her. Neither has Military or Naval intel, for that matter.”

 _But they’re all searching for her_.

“And now,” he said. “My turn. For the last time, Colonel, who are you working for?”

Sometimes the best damn lies were the truth in all its strange and improbable glory.

“I told you, Vizier Amedda,” she replied, with a smile. “I serve a man who can and has done the impossible: I serve our supreme leader - the Emperor.”

* * *

Brendol Hux bit down on the harsh laughter that bubbled up at the Supreme Leader’s grandiose declaration. A _miracle_ , of all the most ridiculous suggestions. Begging for miracles - no, they ought to grit their teeth and fight. Take the galaxy back klick by klick, inch by inch. The galaxy had been won through intelligence, perseverance and frequently, sheer bloodymindedness but never on the strength of miracles. A stupid commander could lose entire battalions and gain only a tiny foothold; a truly intelligent soldier could, with maybe two or three men, win an entire stronghold if they knew precisely when and where to strike. What he wanted - what he _had_ wanted, before bloody bureaucracy had gotten in the way - was to raise a generation of intelligent, thinking soldier who would put the Empire before themselves. That was what the Supreme Leader had promised he would have. Instead, they were here, begging for _miracles_ . Space-dust. _Ridiculous_.

He should have known it took more than promises for the chalarax to change its spots. Or the average Imperial to grow a pair of choobies and go out on a kriffing limb.

“A miracle?” he said, leaning forward and rapping the table sharply. “We need _people_ -”

“And we will have people,” the Supreme Leader replied placidly. “But an army needs its tools -”

“And tools need soldiers,” he snapped.

Randd stirred.

“He’s right,” he said uncomfortably, as though it pained him to agree with Brendol. “Our fleet and our army are both too young and too old - we need new recruits - better training for the young officers and enlists we already have -”

If the Supreme Leader had the slightest understanding of resource allocation, he failed to evince any signs of it now.

“Gentlemen,” he told them, “we will come to that in time, but again, we must be patient. These things cannot be rushed. We will have a grand army, but to have an army we must build it first and to build ourselves an army we must know what we plan to do with it, or else run the risk of holding the reins of an unruly and ravenous beast.”

The subtle implication of the words weren’t lost on Brendol: _we all know what happens to men who try to subdue such beasts_. It had been part of the Empire’s downfall, but not in the way the Supreme Leader supposed - but no, he would, like Randd, hold his tongue. They wouldn’t bare all the cracks in their armour to potential investors. No dirty undershirts in public and all that.

“You keep mentioning this proposition,” said Kuat, an elegant if sissy-ish young man who’d made a great show of affecting boredom throughout the proceedings. “But you still haven’t told us what exactly it is you’re proposing we do. More blasters? More ships? Bigger ships?”

“Commandant Hux will answer you better than I can, given the chance,” said the Supreme Leader. “And he’s right - we need soldiers, better soldiers. But I think, we can do better than a merely loyal, thinking army -”

He paused and tapped two of those long fingers together before resuming: “The problem with the Empire was that we grew complacent - about everything. We all know what the Empire became in its dying days - an unwieldy monster, choked on bureaucracy, corruption and petty ambitions and grudges, run by small-minded and self-interested people with no real vision, no dedication to the greater good of the galaxy. And then, towards the very end - so much slackness, so much carelessness. We’ve spent enough time cutting away the fat and the slack. Now we must arm this sleek new machine - but not, I think, with just blasters, no. If we’re improving upon the Empire, then we do it tenfold. New weapons, better weapons. Blasters, yes and ships - a fleet the likes of which the galaxy has never seen before - and the beginning of a peace that brings _true_ prosperity, gentlemen - Lady Santhe - that is what I want. But I want - _we_ want - no, we _must_ have _more_.”

The _we_ was a hastily tacked on afterthought, tacked on to what sounded like a thinly veiled plea for a brand new Death Star; so much for the sleek new machine, divorced from self-interest and petty ambition. And yet, no one else, except for Randd seemed to have caught the little slip. Randd, like him, had to have smelt the way this reeked of personal ambition masquerading as civic duty. Civic duty, of course, necessitated a weapon to end all weapons and none of the dull practicality of bureaucracy. As much as he loathed it, bureaucracy was unavoidable. It was as much a proof of order and the rule of law as it was its enemy. Besides which, the unswerving dedication of the small-minded to keeping the gears and levers of bureaucracy running smoothly was reassuring. But then, very few and even fewer businesses, would have been willing to pump credits into the dull and unglamourous business of state-building. People liked the flash, the shiny. More weapons, bigger weapons, bigger, better blasters. More sleek durasteel and materiel. More credits for the pragmatic businessman, less men for them.

The Supreme Leader continued, pre-empting Brendol’s objections:

“Our friends here will tell you the obvious solution is more numbers. I agree, in principle, of course. But you know as well as I do that numbers won’t win us wars, or else the galaxy would still be ours and the _scum_ who’ve plunged it into disorder would have never had the chance to come to power. Our iron fist - the long arm of the Empire - can no longer be our only front. We must fight smarter. You know as well as I do that a single man - a single blaster-shot in the right place, at the right time - a single weapon created with a singular purpose, can achieve far more than an entire army can. A superweapon to end all weapons, supersoldiers to end all soldiers - a war to end all wars -”

He was certain he’d heard those words uttered in almost the same sequence nearly ten years ago, after Alderaan had been obliterated. _One blow to end the war_ , they’d been promised. _Never again!_ The end of all war and of the Rebel insurgency. Instead the Death Stars had become black holes at the heart of the Empire - gravity wells that had consumed too much - men, minerals, crystals, labour - all of which could have been better used elsewhere - until the entire system had collapsed in on itself and swallowed the kriffing Emperor and half their Navy along with it.

Once could have been excused as an accident, but twice - well it stopped looking like an accident and more like thoughtless carelessness and arrogance on their part. And now to press for it a third time – it was stupidity, wasn’t it? Bloody stupidity or some stupid superstition about numbers and the Force Advisor Tashu had whispered about in the man’s ears, corrupting any sense he might have had.

“The future is no longer what it used to be,” the Supreme Leader continued. “But one adapts, if one is to survive. We are nothing, if not consummate survivors and if we are to survive, we must speak the language of this new age. Of _progress_.”

“A new language?” Boz Hiram of Blastech said sharply, his toothbrush moustache quivering with suspicion. “What kind of new language?”

Sometimes Brendol had the uncomfortable sensation – as he did now, with the Supreme Leader simply studying them silently from underneath that dark hood – that the Supreme Leader could read them all like they were unencrypted, public holocrons; the same uncanny feeling he’d always had around the Grand Inquisitor. As though the hair on the back of his neck was all on end. It made him wonder if the Supreme Leader was really as mild and ordinary as he made himself out to be: an ordinary man, just an ordinary commander like the rest of them, blessed with an extraordinary gift for pulling on strings to make things happen. Maybe, like Maratelle said, he was something else entirely. Something _uncommon_ . Something _unusual_ . Even back then on Arkanis, there had been - _rumours_ \- about what the Emperor and his watchdog Vader could do - their _abilities_ . Maratelle always lowered her voice and said it reverently - fearfully - as though there were people listening in - but that was Maratelle for you, paranoid and mad - even when she whispered it with that unearthly glitter in her eyes. _The Force_ . A load of junk, if there ever was but the _rumours_ \- well they _did_ make one wonder.

If the Supreme Leader was like them - like the Grand Inquisitor and his oblique and arrogant and interfering ways - it would certainly explain Advisor Tashu’s sudden importance, despite being neither a military man, nor versed with the most basic military strategies and tactics - despite being completely fragging mad - the Supreme Leader’s fixation - no - his preoccupation with _miracles_ , instead of cold, hard numbers - his _distaste_ for the merely _ordinary_.

It would explain the way the hair on the back of his neck was standing on end right now.

“Technological terror,” the Supreme Leader said, finally. “Cold, hard miracles, gentlemen - Lady Santhe - _that_ is my grand solution. You may take it or leave it.”

The stunned silence that followed was so thick it could have been sliced with a vibroblade. It was the Muun who broke it finally, voicing the unvoiceable.

“This is all very interesting,” the alien said. “But my clients would like something more substantial before they agree to pledge any of their, ah, considerable resources to your little organization - surely there must be some, er, tangible courses of action you propose to take, Supreme Leader …?”

The most worrying thing about - technological terror, his _abilities_ , that dark hood, all of this - was how little they knew about this man who styled himself their Supreme Leader. He had come to them, ascended their ranks, purely on the strength of having known Admiral Rax once. Or at least, they had assumed he knew him once. It had been the logical assumption to make, in the wake of Jakku. He had come to them after Jakku while they were still floundering over their loss, with his hood pulled down low over his face the way he was wearing it now and Adviser Tashu had smiled his nasty little smile - so it had never been said out _loud_ , but they’d assumed - after all Jakku had been Rax’s triumph - or failure, depending on which way one looked at it. But it had never been said out _loud_ \- so who knew? Who really knew what was underneath that hood?

For all they knew, he might not have been human - he might not have been - _anything_.

The Supreme Leader skilfully dodged the question of his name.

“Have you heard of Project Harvester, Mr Percalus?” he asked the Muun. “No? Then I recommend we wait for my contact  to explain the precise mechanics of what we’re about to do, since this _is_ my contact’s field of expertise - we cannot rush blindly into things because it strikes our fancy. Careful planning and patience - yes, patience is the key! My contact will arrive precisely when they mean to -”

As if on cue, the door slid open soundlessly on a nervous youngish blond man in a labcoat, datapad clutched to his chest and eyes flitting around the room in an unfocused manner. He was sweating profusely too, despite the cool air circulating via the headquarters’ climate control system - and there was a tightness about his jaw that suggested - _yes_. Fear. A fearless man, a man without secrets wouldn’t stand around looking hunted. Only the guilty or the cowardly went around looking hunted. If it was a joke - another one of the Supreme Leader’s little shows - little theatrical demonstrations he delighted in conjuring up, before getting to business - it was a poor one in poor taste. If it was real - what good was a loth-rat like this boy going to do them? What good could a loth-rat like this boy do anybody?

The man stumbled forward into the room, pushed in on the wrong end of a blaster and then -

 _She_ stepped through.

The last time they’d seen each other, it’d been in a dingy little room squirrelled away in one of the emptier towers at the Academy on Arkanis. She’d said something about a transfer to Coruscant, pulling an Imperial issue undershirt down over those full breasts of hers - they were hard up for hands, she’d said. All officers on deck. He hadn’t even known that they’d needed women to run the kitchens on Coruscant. It had sounded positively primitive, but he hadn’t been on Coruscant since the Clone Wars - it must have been the new fashion, he’d thought. They had droids even on the Outer Rim, where nearly half the tech was piled up in junkyards, waiting to be scrapped. He’d though: _those core types, always showing off their wealth_. A part of him had registered, albeit dimly, that it was ridiculous to send a woman to man the Academy kitchens when clearly a droid would have been more efficient - but he’d seen her around - full-formed and lovely even in her drab grey uniform, with dark hair cascading in ringlets down the back of her neck,  impossibly wide-eyed with a delightfully innocent way of studying the world around her - and there had really been no other explanation for her presence at the Academy. So he’d gone up to her and said:

“You’re extremely good looking for a kitchen girl.”

To which she’d responded by simpering and giggling and then saying, “Well we’re all full of surprises, sir.”

And that, as they say, had been that.

“There’s no need to stand, Commandant,” she said, rudely shattering the memory.

He hadn’t even noticed he’d half-risen from his seat when she entered the room.

“A _kitchen girl_ ,” he hissed in the Supreme Leader’s direction. “That’s your grand idea?”

She was still impossibly lovely, even with the threads of grey streaking her dark hair. But the fact remained: she was not one of _them_ . Sloane, at least, had known a thing or two about military strategy and war. Her - _well_ -

“Colonel Livillan - a kitchen girl?” said Lady Santhe, clearly amused. She strolled over to the - _woman_. “I can’t imagine where you got that idea from, Commandant. Cilla darling, good to see you.”

The - _woman_ \- grinned and embraced Lady Santhe with an easy familiarity.

“Don’t scold the man, Valles,” she said. “He’s a dreadful flatterer. No one else has ever told me I’m good looking for a kitchen girl.”

He sat down, gritting his teeth to keep himself from snapping something unwise or impolite in response - anything to draw attention away from the flush creeping up his neck, from the way she so _coolly_ humiliated him - but no, no dirty undershirts in public. And all that.

“After all,” she continued, loudly, too loudly, too pointed and looking far too amused, “it’s not every day one gets that kind of excitement on Arkanis and when it comes, it all comes together. Spy-spotting is a difficult game, isn’t it Brendol? ”

“I can’t imagine why a good spy would expect to be spotted,” he retorted, before he could consider the wisdom of rising to her bait. “Unless they weren’t very good at all.”

“Once, maybe,” she said. “Twice begins to look like carelessness – that _is_ what you used to say, isn’t it? Was that what you told Governor Tarkin, after the rebel blew up – oh what was it – nearly half the Academy?”

“And yet, somehow, I was the one who came away with a medal for valour,” he replied. “Clearly I must have done something right.”

“Clearly,” she replied. “Or else you were handpicked by someone very powerful, for a very specific purpose.”

“I think you mean special.”

“I always say precisely what I mean,” she drawled. “I’d be careful if I had a chrono ticking away over my head like you do, Brendol.”

“Cilla please,” said the Supreme Leader. “Our friends are getting impatient.”

Despite the flush creeping up his neck and the unease at her veiled threat, he felt a twinge of  disappointment when she finally looked away from him, smirk swiftly replaced with a more business-like expression.

“I’m terribly sorry,” she told them. “You know how it is - unavoidable delays, foul traffic – absolutely foul. And Doctor Kellin required a little bit of, ah, convincing before we could leave New Republic territory.”

“You all know Doctor Kubark Kellin’s work, I presume,” said the Supreme Leader. “A true visionary of our times.”

“Genetically modified miracle babies?” Casull Sonn said dryly. “Truly _terrifying_.”

“Not just genetically modified miracle babies,” the Doctor replied, laughable in his earnestness. “Anyone can do _that_. The trick is in giving them capabilities that push the human genome to its extreme without causing any other unintended effects. And I don’t mean making them geniuses or just strong but the real thing. The Doctor - my superior - needed xe - “ and here he glanced at the Muun, before hastily cutting himself off. “Cybernetics - droid components - non-human parts - to achieve the same results - mentally - we’re still having trouble with improving the physical resilience of these models - but theoretically - we haven’t had time to run the tests - they should be able to fight the average Force-user -”

“And that,” said the Supreme Leader. “Is the key. Not only is the Republic the only legal arms-buyer in this galaxy, but we know that Skywalker -”

“If he exists,” Hiram interjected. “And isn’t a legend created as a rallying point by the New Republic’s propaganda machine.”

“We _know_ that Skywalker exists,” the Supreme Leader replied. “There are enough records in the Imperial Archives to corroborate the truth of his existence _and_ the Emperor’s interest in him -”

 _Skywalker_ . He glanced surreptitiously at the chrono on his wrist - 1014 hours, exactly. The Jedi were a dead threat. The Jedi were extinct – he’d been there when it happened, when they were all killed. For treason, no less. He’d seen one of them blasted down himself – the Supreme Leader could go on all he liked about the Jedi, but the Jedi were all gone. It was – _her_ – words that bothered him: the connection between the chrono and the Someone Powerful and the Specific Purpose was vague, tenuous, even, and yet he was uneasy. For months after the unfortunate affair with the rebel and the rather more fortunate (and for that reason, highly suspicious) death of Lieutenant Chiron, he’d waited for the iron fist of the Empire to descend on them. A punishment to fit the crime. And then, nothing. Maratelle had developed a tendency towards paranoia, that was all. _They’re watching, Brendol_ , she’d tell him. _Everywhere_. But nothing. The young kitchen girl had come and gone and not long after he’d received his medal and while Maratelle eyed it with alcohol-stewed suspicion, he’d accepted that it had meant that he was back in Governor Tarkin’s good graces. His reasonable enough graces. His safe from the iron fist of the Empire graces.

And _yet_.

But no, he thought, studying _her_ covertly. It was Maratelle rubbing off on him again. He _had_ been selected. By Rax and later, the Supreme Leader. In that regard, at least, she - Cilla - was right. He had been chosen, out of all the others, because he had ambition, drive and a vision for the future of the Empire. Unlike so many others who were content to merely follow the rules and let everyone else do the punting and the hard work, he had imagination and insight into the strengths and weaknesses of the Empire’s armies. And _yet_ -

“Anyone can follow orders,” the Supreme Leader was saying, “but to _believe_ in them - well - but I’m getting ahead of myself - this is more Commandant Hux’s special interest that it is mine, though I do believe Doctor Kellin has been doing some very interesting research in the area, isn’t it so, Doctor?”

“Ah,” said the Doctor. “Yes - it was all very experimental but we’d been studying new conditioning techniques -”

Or maybe this was a game, an intimidation tactic. An attempt to determine how well he performed under pressure, or else to weed out his weaknesses and put them on display so she could pick them off one by one. That was what she was doing with the Doctor after all, wasn’t it? She must have put the fear of the rebel scum into him to bring him out here when really, life imprisonment under the New Republic was not half as bad as it had been painted - merely dishonourable. The scum were all strong believers in second chances and what they called restorative justice, which was a fancy way of saying if one gave them one’s secrets and one was small fry, they would let one go free. And if one happened to be big fry,  all one would get was a cushy home - and a lifelong sentence to permanent house arrest. Which meant, of course, the best officers ended up shut away and slowly going mad with all the inaction, while the worst of the loth-rats and the worms slunk away, free.

The Doctor would have been a loth-rat, if he’d stayed. Maybe even a worm, if they hadn’t taken a personal interest in him. If - _Cilla_ \- hadn’t taken a personal interest in him - all this talk of genes and modification - superhumans for a new age - it all sounded grand, but hardly amounted to much, did it? There was no reason for him to be here, except for Cilla’s personal interest in him - what she believed was his usefulness. The Supreme Leader had never met the Doctor before; it was all on her word that they’d come here in the hope that something _useful_ would come out of it. Instead all they’d got was this bedraggled young man. The kind of man who’d sell everyone out if it meant he could save his skin. A loth-rat.

What did a loth-rat like him have to offer them, after all? What could a loth-rat like him do except look pretty and talk big and fortunately for him, charm the right woman into believing he was more useful than he was?

(Or, quite possibly, been charmed, lured and fragged into submission in whatever _Cilla_ ’s little game was, to be disposed of whenever convenient.)

Was that what she meant? _Specific_ . A specific purpose. Use once and throw away when finished. Or perhaps an expiry date. A ticking chrono, marking time while Someone Important measured out the milliseconds of his life in terms of their _usefulness_ : was there, for example, a time-bomb, strapped to his back, waiting to self-destruct when he finished being specifically useful? He wasn’t sure he wanted to wait and find out and damn it all, he wouldn’t lie down and let them have it. They needed him. They were blind if they thought they didn’t. They would _always_ need him because none of them could do what he did. He would simply have to let them know this little fact, that was all - and then there would be no expiry date, no ticking chrono, no Someone Important - so many seconds added on to his days for one hundred grams worth of solid _usefulness_ . Above all, _she_ would be wrong.

 _Stars_ , Maratelle’s paranoia really was rubbing off on him.

The Doctor was still not done when he finally looked away from - _Cilla_ \- the name still awkward and strange - she was Faydre, would be Faydre, the kitchen girl who’d laughed along with him because they were a _they_ , their own little secret - and back at the Doctor, in his silly labcoat and sweating nervously, as though any moment now, any moment they’d figure out he was a fraud and - and what? - throw him out of an airlock? - quietly dispatch him with an unfortunate case of food poisoning? - throw him to - _Cilla_ \- and leave him entirely at her mercy?

“We were only just putting the data together,” the Doctor droned on. “Some of it suggested it was the subject’s age - some of it, reinforcement worked better than punishment - well if they insisted on electrocuting everyone, why wouldn’t they? That’s no way to change minds - you have to get inside there - and I don’t just mean teaching them. We were developing drugs, pills, that really got into people’s brains so we could hijack them: there was hypnosis and trigger words - put them all together and you could make a man yours. Put it together with subliminal conditioning and it’s foolproof - particularly if we used it on the children - the special uh, miracle ones.”

 _Children_. Everywhere, the New Republic was closing in, system after system falling prey to it and all the Supreme Leader ever did was tell them the time was never right. Always, the time is not yet right, these things can’t be rushed, this is a game of strategy and impatience will cost us more than it will gain. Not now, my dear Commandant, I understand your need for more students, but we must be patient. On and on and on while his officers and crew slowly descended into drunkenness, indiscipline and the spacer’s doldrums.

Meanwhile here they were, talking miracle babies and experimental, untested science.

“And now the business half of this,” said the Supreme Leader. “In order for this to succeed, we need equipment - laboratories, technical equipment, all the necessary compounds - and investments. In return, we put our own not inconsiderable resources at your disposal.”

“Resources,” the Muun rolled his _r_ s thoughtfully. “What kind of resources?”

“Knowledge,” the Supreme Leader replied. “Intelligence. Cold, hard resources. Oh, the Sector has a long arm, I know, I know, but the Sector has always chased after the quickly remunerative and has never been interested in more prosaic long term growth strategies - low risk, short-term profit, you might say, has been its motto - and its weakness. Now, the Empire, for all its faults, had a considerable amount of resources to pump into high-risk but long-term profitable endeavours and as part of one of these endeavours, they sent probe droids sent across the galaxy for several purposes including, but not limited to: mapping, data collection, exploratory missions and pilot testing in resource rich planets. One cannot effectively rule a galaxy that remains half unknown, after all. Their factfinding missions proved extremely enlightening, if shockingly so. Did you know, for example, that nearly fifty per cent of all the resources on the Outer Rim remain untapped and untouched and very likely, unknown? And this - only the Outer Rim. The numbers are quite revelatory, even to the layman - the sheer amount of resources that lie pristine and untouched in the Unknown Regions boggles the mind. We have so much more than our scientists and engineers can possibly use even over, pardon the analogy, a Muun’s lifetime. So I propose an exchange. _You_ are struggling with the New Republic and its burgeoning restrictions on your trade and industrial practices, as well as all the tariffs and export quotas that have been digging into your bottom line - the failure to standardize trade practices across the galaxy. _We_ , on the other hand, have know-how but none of the practical technical equipment necessary for advancing and perfecting our know-how. So, we exchange: your technology and funding, in return for unrestrained access to the Imperial archives and the Unknown Regions. A territory, I might add, far outside the New Republic’s jurisdiction.”

“It’s certainly an interesting proposition,” the Muun said, still inscrutable. “But I fail to see how _knowing_ about the Outer Rim territories - and what lies beyond - is going to improve our bottom lines. Knowledge is not the same as action, you’ll agree. And you must admit, as tempting as the Unknown Regions sound, there is ah, something reassuring about the familiarity of the Outer Rim that is more likely to assure investors that their credits won’t be frittered away.”

“The Supreme Leader believes in a long range view of history and the future,” Cilla replied and then added with a nasty smile. “The Outer Rim will come around. In time. Galactic dejarik isn’t a game that can be rushed.”

“No,” Boz Hiram said impatiently. Far too excited. “It’s a fair question - what kind of guarantee - collateral - are you going to give us so we know you aren’t squandering our investments on private pleasures? How do we know you actually possess the Unknown Regions? What about the Outer Rim? We’ve all heard of Doctor Kellin’s work and Commandant Hux and Governor Randd - but who are _you_? Why - your Supreme Leader - who is he? Can we trust him - you - if you - I’m sorry, but I have to say it - won’t reveal your identity, sir? We all run businesses - if the New Republic comes after us, we have to have answers and reasonable ones, damn it.”

A certain unease seized him at the speculative glint in Cilla’s eyes - the way they flashed, before turning thoughtful when she looked at Hiram - an ugly treacherous little voice in the back of his mind whispering: _there’s one whose chrono just stopped ticking._

“Answers or excuses?” she asked Hiram, then flashed him a bland, polite smile when he failed to reply.

“One must cover one’s bases,” said Lady Santhe, very sensibly. “You must try to see this from our perspective or else we’re only wasting each others’ time here.”

“One can’t rush these things after all,” said Kuat, loudly enough that it prompted a slight red to tinge Cilla’s cheeks, soft enough that he could always backtrack - like the _loth_ \- _rats_ each and every single one of those business types were - and claim he hadn’t meant to say it out loud at all.

The Muun was the only one who remained straight-faced, a true player of galactic dejarik, and said nothing. The others all murmured agreement: indiscernible half-swallowed phrases about _bottom lines_ and _investor skepticism_ and _not a charity_ and _strapped for credits_ and _tenuous and insubstantial proof_.

Naturally, none of them were paying attention when Cilla keyed the door open and then said: “You can come in now dear.”

A young girl, around the same age as his Armitage, dressed in Imperial greys, stepped into the room. For a moment he wondered if somehow Cilla had tricked him and there had been twins instead of just the boy, but the girl’s eyes were the wrong colour and her nose was far too aquiline to have come from either of them. There were only a few officers he could remember who had had such distinctly aquiline noses - and the red hair. On the other hand, it couldn’t _possibly_ \- she’d never - besides he’d seen her only _once_ on a parade day on Lothal, drifting at the edges of Tarkin’s retinue of officers. It could just as well be a trick of the light. There were any number of women in the galaxy who were copper haired - even copper-haired women with green eyes, even among their ranks. A high ranking officer like her, in the Imperial Navy, could have hardly afforded to have a _child_ , least of all with the rebel scum crawling out of the cracks everywhere - and yet, he thought, he’d seen this child’s face before: the child _was_ the Admiral’s spitting image.

“This is Kasia,” said Cilla, one hand resting on the child’s shoulder. “The first fruits of Doctor Kellin’s work. Tell us - how old are you dear?”

“Seven,” the child - Kasia - said proudly. “But I’ll be eight in three Imperial months.”

“Your datapad, if you please,” Cilla told the Doctor, then addressed the room at large while typing into the datapad. “Kasia, like the rest of her cohort, wasn’t born to a mother. Not in the strictest sense, at least. In fact, she was born in a lab in conditions that were carefully optimized to provide the best and healthiest environment for the infant to be born into - besides the regular care concerning her birth date - neither too early nor too late - and of course, all the improvements that Doctor Kellin made. Here - you can read all the details yourself - is that proof enough for you?”

She held the datapad out to Hiram. “You’ll even be able to read her genome, if that’s what you want.”

“How many children like her exist?” Casull Sonn asked, as Hiram scowled over the proffered datapad. “What do you mean by her cohort?”

“Eight,” Doctor Kellin replied. “The rest of them - they don’t stay - live - in the labs with us. Just her.”

“You see,” said Cilla, “Kasia also has the misfortune of being an orphan. Both her parents were victims of the Rebel terrorists.”

“I hate them,” Kasia announced, unprompted. “Rebel scum.”

The conviction - the words - sounded strange - laughable - in the eight year old’s squeaky, high-pitched voice. A parody of themselves, parroted by a child who couldn’t possibly understand what they meant yet. Armitage would have never made those words sound so childish. Armitage would never have said anything at all, let alone said it with conviction. Armitage never spoke with conviction even when he spoke at all. If he had any strong views on the Empire, any latent patriotic sensibilities, he’d kept it well hidden from both Maratelle and him.

“Tell us about your parents, child,” said Lady Santhe, with the silly smile people insisted on using on children. “Who are they?”

The girl hesitated and looked to Cilla, who nodded, before she answered.

“My mother was Admiral Daala,” she answered. “I never met my father but Doctor Kellin says they got half of me from Governor Tarkin.”

The girl said this artlessly, clearly unaware of what either of these names meant. She was too young to remember them as real living people, not heroes - or even heroic real people - and certainly not as parents, the same way he was Armitage’s father. She was too young to have ever known them or to even remember them the clear sharp way he remembered them. The way he remembered that afternoon on Lothal - those closely-cropped copper curls flashing brightly in the dusty white haze that settled over Lothal each afternoon, right at the edge of the group of officers that hung around Tarkin at all times. The only real dab of colour visible in all that dust and their sea of Imperial grey, black and white - besides him of course. Even Tarkin was fully grey by then, all and any colour that he might have once had leached out of him, until he’d blended perfectly with the insides of their starships and their Imperial standard - the perfect Imperial officer. Perfect, even when he was dogmatically pursuing the Empire’s policy on loyalty and perfect even when he was using his position to hoist his pet favourites up the ranks. And not once, but twice - if the rumours had been right - but it hardly mattered _now_ did it?

 _Someone Important_ , Cilla had said. Someone Important. The words echoed uncomfortably in his brain. Someone important. Someone Important, looking down on him and carefully pulling all the various strings: his medal for valour, his son. His specific purpose, still unknown. Cilla - Faydre. Tarkin. Rax. And now this child. There was a puzzle in there, waiting to be put together. He could feel it - but he needed more time to put the pieces together. _More time_ \- to find all the pieces in the first place.

“Admiral Daala and Governor Tarkin were very conscious of their duty to the Empire,” said the Supreme Leader. “As we all are. Can you imagine a better match? Their head for strategy: her passion tempered by his coolness? The very best of the Empire, refined and perfected in this child. Doctor Kellin has provided a necessary, if overlooked and frequently thankless, service to the cause. But, as you see, his time has come. We are already five steps ahead in this little game of ours thanks to him.”

 _More time_ , he thought, the unease rising in him again. This little game of theirs was neither straightforward or honest. The five steps everyone thought the Supreme Leader was ahead in may not have been the five steps the Supreme Leader was ahead. If the Supreme Leader had his own little game on the side - if they were all playing their own versions of dejarik while the Supreme Leader led them inexorably, gently pulling their strings this way and that till they were exactly where he wanted them to be - what did that make them - where did that leave them?

The Munn cleared his throat. “That leaves only one last question that must be answered before we can proceed.”

The Supreme Leader spread his hands expressively. “I’m all ears.”

“Who are you?” said the Muun, leaning forward. “And who were you to the Empire before it fell?”

“Ah,” said the Supreme Leader, folding his hands together. “Let’s say - I was someone who was important enough to have known the projects Doctor Kellin ran for the Empire, outside of his more, ah, public research.”

He rose from his seat and continued: “Please - take your time - my friends and I will leave you for as long as you need to make this decision.”

Clever, arrogant or a man running scared? The omission was too stark, too noticeable. It was either a sign they should abandon ship - or else it was intentional, calculated to draw their attention to its absence - like the hood and the darkness behind the hood, like the way the Supreme Leader gestured elegantly with his hands while he spoke, adding expression to his words. Another one of his little games, the man - the Leader, tugging on their strings. A conductor leading his orchestra and them, obediently plucking at their strings the way he wanted them to.

Of course, one wondered about the music, didn’t one?

The door did not slide open for them.

“You still haven’t told us _who_ you are,” said Kuat smoothly, silky soft.

Each of them played their cues with unerring accuracy - Cilla, half-turned on her heel and another man’s chrono run dry; Tashu with his silly smile; Doctor Kellin, still sweating nervously; Randd and he, straight-backed and alien to galactic dejarik - the rest of them waiting expectantly, hungrily - for a sign. And the Supreme Leader himself, completely inscrutable: the conductor pulling on all their strings.

“Snoke,” he said, after a long pause. “You may call me Supreme Leader Snoke.”

* * *

Consider, for a moment if you will, the problem of a miracle. A strange thing, a miracle! By definition a rarity, but what is its definition? What is a miracle? Was the girl a miracle or a feat of engineering? The galaxy was full of abominations and imperfections. So many dull-witted children, so many mothers and fathers joyfully gloating over these gross imperfections. So many dull, small people. Now we measure perfection in numbers. Numbers can be controlled and if we wish, changed. The girl would fall and break her bones and then, in a few days, in a few hours, the tissue would knit itself back together. If perfection is impossible, then perfection must be a miracle. Now we can turn numbers into perfection, so shall we say, perhaps, these children are not miracles yet? Perfect, but not quite miracles; only improbabilities. Is an improbability a miracle? Or is only the impossible _truly_ miraculous? What is an impossibility? Was the droid in the corner a miracle, an impossibility? Or should we call it another feat of engineering? Another improbability? Isn’t it miraculous? With a string of numbers we give them speech: we might even give them feelings. Man looks at man and man creates a new form of life: one that theoretically, should never die. Isn’t that the greatest miracle of them all: immortality?

Perhaps a miracle should be striking as well as impossible. A droid, a supercomputer are neither striking nor unusual, not even the one in the corner with all its mysteries and its hidden parts: so ordinary, but truly, far more extraordinary than can be conceived off: so let us change the definition. A true miracle is both striking and impossible: will it evoke terror or will it evoke pride? A child may make its family proud, but could a child terrify? Can a man? What kind of man? The Admiral? The dead man? Across the galaxy, the dead remain dead. But now the dead had come back to life, the dead had risen, the dead man would not be silenced. Not once or twice, but three times. Three dead men to raise more dead. Or perhaps, we mean the fruit. Such a beautiful fruit, so exquisite, so perfect in all its dimensions, dangling there from the stars. Perfect on the outside and rotten at the core. Behold the galaxy, divided: a fruit, rotten at its very core and at its centre, the worm, gnawing away at his command. Was it a miracle? See, the rebel scum in their arrogance ignore the truth as it dangled in front of them. Was it striking? Could it terrify?

Could an Emperor?

* * *

Maratelle watched the boy as he played his violin, half-turned away from her. Two years later he was just as much of a puzzle to her as he had been when he’d arrived on board a refugee ship from Naboo, accompanied only by a decrepit fussy nanny droid – and a flimsi pinned inside his shirt pocket containing an elegantly scrawled missive from his mother that was only only three sentences long and skipped all the common courtesies besides a cold thank you. The rest of the letter was equally brief. It had read: _this is Armitage. He mustn’t be allowed to skip eating his vegetables and he must practice his violin for no less than three hours a day_ . Simple, to the point and utterly nondescript. This was Armitage. A not particularly impressive young boy with his father’s red hair and blue eyes and his mother’s straight nose. When greeted, he’d simply eyed her and then said, decisively - _you’ll do_ . The flimsi had said nothing about this. Only: _This is Armitage. He mustn’t be allowed to skip eating his vegetables. He must practice his violin for no less than three hours a day._ Well, this was Armitage, armed with a violin case that was much too large for him to carry around, and a nanny droid with a single travel bag in one hand. Whatever the troubles about the vegetables were, they were clearly to be left in the past where they belonged, along with the various detritus that went into making five year old boys - nothing unusual, nothing out of place, nothing extraordinary.

The violin could not be so easily dismissed, however. A kitchen girl with a violin was not usual at all, even if Brendol had accepted it as a matter of fact. But then Brendol Hux was frequently quite blind to the most obvious things. The kitchen girl, Faydre, had been no kitchen girl at all. Brendol had been far too preoccupied with boasting about his little group of cadets and his grand plans for the Empire’s Academies to notice that she was far too interested in what he had to say for it to have been a younger woman’s flattery - too much of a coincidence for someone who’d appeared on Arkanis at around the same time that Lieutenant Chiron had been sent down by Governor Tarkin. These were the kind of coincidences that would have been harmless any other time, but too many coincidences all together and at a strange time was always a sign that something was wrong. The way the girl had studied things too carefully and and asked too many questions - her hands which had always been too immaculate, too immaculate for someone who was supposed to have worked in kitchens all her life - and every now and then, odd bits and pieces of slang that were a decade too early for someone her age - the stray white strands of hair - the uncanny resemblance she’d born to the ISB’s latest appointment to the board of the Coalition for Progress - all these things added up, if one was interested in looking and she was _very_ interested in knowing just what a Coruscanti kitchen girl was doing, sniffing around Arkanis and - yes, yes, that was it - _mining_ intelligence.

That was why Brendol was the Commandant and _she_ was the loyalty officer. Officially. Unofficially - well that was a different matter entirely, wasn’t it? Just like the kitchen girl. Loth-cats of a different colour: close, but not close enough and just enough to trick Brendol into believing they were worlds apart.

She sipped her tea, carefully running over the first and last conversation she’d ever had with Cilla Livillan once more. As she ruminated, all of a sudden, without warning Armitage drew his bow down across the strings at an odd angle, producing a sound that was harsh and unnatural. A scream, not music. She winced. Armitage paused for a moment in his playing before he resumed again and this wouldn’t have been extraordinary at all, if not for the way the boy’s mouth wavered upwards, in the slightest of smiles, before he continued with his music exercises. Another one of those strange, inexplicable - symptoms, she was tempted to call it. Symptoms of his odd behaviour, symptoms of something strange, something going wrong somewhere.

For two years now, she’d been picking at the conversation with Cilla Livillan, examining it from every angle and searching for something, anything that could explain the child’s odd behaviour. Brendol insisted on calling the boy weak-willed and insipid. Certainly, the boy seemed to have no discernible personality of his own. When asked for an opinion on any subject, his answers were always polite and indeterminate and he had an odd knack of spinning the questions on their head in such a way that it was almost always Brendol who did all the answering for him. And while Brendol talked, the boy listened with a patient expression - and never once disagreed with him.

But this was a far cry from the Armitage who had coolly sized her up at Scaparus port and then said, _you’ll do_ . A sign of confidence? Trust? A mistake? She had considered and discarded each of these options in turn. Something was not right. Something too quick to catch. The boy was not _stupid_ . On the contrary. He simply seemed to have no opinions, none of that strange dogma that all children seemed to acquire at around seven years of age. While his friends were playing at killing Rebel scum, he was playing at - something else entirely. _You always play the Emperor_ , she’d heard one of them shout at the boy, once. Something else, something that filled her with trepidation. He yelled and gambolled along with them and yet - and yet, Maratelle could not shake the feeling that even as they watched young Armitage - hoping that he would prove  himself a blue-blooded Imperial - Armitage was watching them in turn.

 _It’s his eyes_ , she thought. Brendol’s eyes - and Livillan’s watchfulness. Even now, seven years, a war and the collapse of a regime later, the memory was still fresh, right down to the way Cilla had watched her attentively right throughout their conversation.

“I won’t let you upset the delicate balance of things,” she’d told Cilla Livillan. “I married Brendol so I could remain here. I’m not fortunate enough to be one of the Emperor’s chosen few. I’m not extraordinarily anything, nothing anyone cares for. But I’m good at what I do best and what I do best is _pain_ . You’d think there would be a market for pain with all these Rebels and seditionists floating around, but all they want is jumped up spies and I won’t - I _won’t_ have you dabbling around here, rocking this ship because I won’t go - I won’t go, you understand? If you - you’re only a kitchen girl - and I’m the highest ranking loyalty officer on this base and if I tell everyone - well no one’s going to believe you - and believe me, I’m very good at what I do. I won’t have a jumped up spy from Coruscant tearing down all the careful work I’ve put into Project Unity, you understand? I won’t hear it. I won’t let it happen - all these baseless accusations about my husband’s supposed disloyalty or cult of personality or whatever the pfask they’re calling it up in Coruscant nowadays - I won’t let it happen, I _won’t_.”

She had been both drunker and more indiscreet than she’d meant to be, railing away hysterically about how her career was about to be destroyed by Governor Tarkin’s personal vendetta against her husband. Cilla Livillan had simply stood there silently and watched her, head tilted slightly to one side as though she was a puzzle, a modern and elliptical work of art that had to be studied to be understood. Even worse, it had worked.

“Did you know they tried to take it away from me before?” she’d said. It was too much and she’d been unable to stop the words from tumbling out indiscreetly, indiscriminately. “Project Unity. I pioneered all of that. I wrote those papers. You wrote papers too, didn’t you? But they didn’t take them away from you. Cilla Livillan, author of _Against the Politics of Aesthetic Extravagance: Minimalism and Progress in a time of Cultural Corruption_ , a foundational text of the New Order - well who’d want to read what a girl from New Ator had to say about the psychology of reconditioning and re-education? Well I fought my way up, up, up and I nearly had it all in the bag, when one of the Emperor’s pets comes along and takes a look at my little project and decides that this is relevant to the Empire’s interests - and we have a little reshuffle in headquarters and my nose is put out of joint - well not for _long_. They can’t remove me now though they’d like to, I bet they’d like to. Whoever heard of it? A silly little farmgirl, coming up so far in the world? Who’d ever heard of such a nonsensical thing?”

“So what do you want?” Cilla Livillan had said, not coolly or cruelly or even angrily but with an air of scientific curiosity.

What did she want. _In any other time, or place, or circumstance_ , she’d thought, allowing herself to give in and let her gaze drift suggestively over Cilla Livillan’s shapely form. A directionless, meaningless thought. She had her loves and her affairs and Brendol had his loves and his affairs and it would have been unwise to have let them mingle. They kept their lives separate because they were modern, because neither of them liked the fuss and this would have been a fuss. What she wanted - no change. She had had what she wanted in the little empire she’d built for herself, re-educating rebels. _Pain_ , she’d thought. Something she was good at.

“I don’t want to be laughed at,” she’d said, finally. “I keep quiet, you keep quiet, we all keep quiet and it’s all quiet on the Arkanian front.”

“A glowing report,” Cilla had replied. “Don’t you think that’s going to rouse their suspicions even more?”

So she’d taken the bait and said, grudgingly and ungraciously: ‘Alright. What do you want?’

Cill had frowned, which she’d filed away as important, something to think about later - only _later_ had come around five years later along with Armitage and his cryptic letter of introduction. Five years later, it was impossible to remember just _why_ Cilla Livillan had frowned, or why she’d thought it was important at the time. Or whether, in fact, it had had nothing to do with Cilla Livillan and everything to do with her own pitiful transparency.

Because Cilla Livillan had frowned, thought and then replied, with the slightest hint of a smile - a genuine one, mind, not the razor sharp ones she’d seen her give Brendol: “I’m not sure that we want very different things from each other.”

 _Pain_ , she’d thought. Something she was good at, something that was hers. Small e, big E; her empire within the Empire. What woman wouldn’t have wanted that? No, not just a woman but everyone. The only truly universal desire, wasn’t it - something of one’s own, something meaningful to validate one’s existence - that was why they slaved away when they could be getting juiced out of their minds, slowly baked to death in the sun. Everyone wanted something with their names on it when they died. Even the Empire’s spies.

“You can tell Tarkin that my husband’s detractors are afraid of the kind of cadets he’s making,” she’d said. “Unimaginative idiots like Roddance - what kind of good can they do the Empire when they haven’t got half a brain in their ridiculous heads?”

“You want me to tell Tarkin they’re jealous,” Cilla had said, looking thoughtful.

“Aren’t they?” she’d replied. “You’ve seen them. They’re like loth-wolves. Just _waiting_ \- they don’t care about the Empire.”

“And you care?”

“Don’t you?”

Cilla had reached across the table and touched her rank insignia as though it would come away, turn fake in her hands, before she’d leaned back and said: “Like I said, we both want the same things.”

And she’d thought, _yes_. Yes. That’s why he’s fragging you. We all want the same things. All three of us.

 _But maybe_ , she thought - what if she had been wrong. Cilla Livillan had left two months later with nothing and then disappeared, fully disappeared. No more parties, no more operas – nothing – for the latest appointment to the board of the Coalition for Progress. Tarkin had acquired a new protegee, another young woman in need of a boost up the ranks. Daala had also disappeared around this time, but then Daala had reappeared around Jakku for a final last hurrah, unlike Cilla who appeared to have vanished completely. Then, the child whom Brendol had hid from her for five years which had showed, perversely, he still had some kind of shame, the last vestiges of a conscience. Four years later, the Emperor had disappeared and so had his watchdog Vader - and his other secret, one of his pet ghosts, though they called her his _hand_ had vanished without a trace - and the Empire had come crumbling down down down. Brendol had hidden his embarrassment at having had the indiscretion to father a bastard behind bluster and announced that there was a child and they were going to keep the child, everyone else be damned. She’d wanted to say, _I know_ . Or maybe, _frankly, my darling, I don’t particularly fragging care_. She’d had what she’d wanted, she still had what she wanted and the child had been inevitable, a kind of blackmail for her own good behaviour and the implicit understanding between herself and Cilla Livillan. Fair was fair. She got what she wanted. One paid one’s promises by keeping them. It was only after the child had arrived and declared her fit - fit for what? - that she’d realized that this child was what Brendol imagined was his last bargaining chip. One last desperate attempt at relevance to - who? Powerful people. Blind people. Somebody running a new kind of Empire in hiding.

She’d thought to herself, then: some kind of Empire. Cilla Livillan had played by her rules and seemingly, lost everything, then disappeared herself and left behind only this: one boy, slightly odd, didn’t care much for vegetables, resistant to practicing his violin, occasionally played at being Emperor instead of just shooting rebels.

 _What are you_ . She studied the boy covertly. _What are you_ . Brendol had returned, shaken, from Deltooine. Cilla was alive and well and there was another Daala. _A test-tube baby_ , he’d called her. Tailor-made for Daala, according to her specifications. Who knew you you could get a baby fitted like a dress? The Supreme Leader, Brendol said, called it a miracle. She tried to picture it: a perfect child, a miracle. A girl with copper hair and bright green eyes who was perfect. Not perfect the way parents think their offspring are perfect, but objectively - that was what Brendol had said too. Objectively. Well someone had the objectives and whoever was making them had something - an agenda - something - they were making good on.

Small e or big E, small e or big E. It all came back to that, it all came back to Cilla Livillan, good old Cilla Livillan. _What are you_. Cilla Livillan seemed like the kind of person who kept agendas hidden up her sleeves along with a few to spare in her boots because it was a good survival skill to have. Neither Brendol nor she had been cut out for that kind of life. They’d kept their heads down and worked and had one single honest ambition, maybe two at a stretch, they’d spent their lives devoting themselves to. But Cilla wasn’t that kind of person. Cilla Livillan had agendas and agendas and agendas, which was the only reason why Cilla could have been so easily swayed by her hysterical, drunk screed because there must have been another agenda of hers that had fit just right, just then.

She should have broken some of Cilla Livillan’s fingers. Those long, elegant fingers - picture them, dangling uselessly and swollen, twice, thrice their size. Answers, truth, came easily along with pain. _What are you_ . That kind of question demanded broken fingers. Cilla Livillan’s. Armitage’s. _If Armitage hadn’t been a child_ , she thought. _If he wasn’t a boy_. The answers would have come so easy. Children were the best. Good spies, bad at pain but everyone was afraid of hurting them so they never gave away their secrets - but no, no, Armitage was her son now and there were other ways of getting answers out of children. Out of humans too, but the Empire had never been interested in those. The Empire understood fists and blasters and pain; not so much the strange power of silence and empty spaces and kindness.

 _What are you_.

She must have said it out loud without realizing it. Slipped in, in the middle of her reverie, between her wondering what Cilla Livillan’s game was and where young Armitage fit in all of this. Her unconscious desperation for an answer, before she went mad, before they all went mad, turning traitor and giving her away. Because Armitage turned and looked at her, that same uncanny way his mother had, once upon a time, a long time ago, and said:

“A miracle.”

**Author's Note:**

> I have a much deeper respect now for Pulp's ability to churn out tunes like Disco 2000 and This Is Hardcore without getting boring, because _man_ trying to channel them while writing Brendol Hux was probably the most uncomfortable bit of writing I have ever done. 
> 
> This is also kind of a very on the nose response to _Aftermath: Life Debt_ and you can clearly see where I've scratched out every attempt at turning Hux's backstory into a daddy issues thing and turned it into a story about evil space wlws and one very sad specimen of a man.
> 
> The bit where Snoke bats on about the rats is a vague bastardization of the closing passage of Albert Camus' _The Plague_ , so all credit to Camus for coming up with that particular analogy. 
> 
> Come say hello on [tumblr](http://tobermoriansass.tumblr.com/).


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